talkin´ trash

antonio and i decided last month that it was about time to have a meeting in san jorge about the trash problem there. i don´t have any pictures of trash to show you, although it´d probably be easier to show you than describe it. but i´ll try to paint a vivid enough picture. el salvador is a beautiful country, and i´m of the opinion that the area where i live is more beautiful than the rest of the country. there is just one problem.....trash. it´s practically everywhere you look.....some places worse than others. every kind of trash you can imagine, but mostly plastic bottles (coke, salva cola, water, etc) in all shapes and sizes, litter the sides of the roads and the streets. potato chip bags are probably in the lead for the most popular type of trash that is found clogging up ditches and covering the ground in front of tiendas. san jorge´s location is interesting.....it´s located on a major road that links ahuachapán and sonsonate and FOVIAL (the national road construction group) passes every now and again and cleans up the ditches and what-not on all these major roads. so what the people of san jorge do is they gather their trash up in those plastic bags you get when you buy stuff at the grocery store and they then throw those bags of trash in the ditch and along the highway so that when FOVIAL does come, they´ll pick up all those bags of trash, seemingly solving everyone´s problems.

but it´s not even close to being that simple. first of all, like i mentioned before, FOVIAL only comes every once in a while.....like once every couple months or so. and people aren´t just putting their trash out there every once in a while. they´re putting it there every single day. secondly, you would not believe the number of dogs that run around and scavenge through every bit of garbage they can find. i´m still astounded by the number of dogs here and they just keep having more puppies and they seriously will probably overtake the number of human beings in this country some day. it´s inevitable. these dogs, in their wild scavenging for that last bit of grease that someone missed in their haste to get rid of their trash, tear up these mountains of bags on the side of the road, scattering it everywhere. third, not only are there dogs, but there are chickens, horses, cows, other birds and goats to pick up where the dogs left off. fourth, the wind. so after all the animals have picked through the garbage as meticulously as possible, the wind then comes in and does its job, blowing everything around with the force of a small tornado. last but not least, is people´s undying loyalty to laziness. they simply don´t want to deal with being responsible for that bag of chips they bought at the tienda and ate on their walk home, so they casually just toss it on the street. after all this has taken place what we´re left with is one trashy community.

at the monthly meetings in san jorge that antonio hosts with the madres of the community, i´ve talked about the trash problem and the responsibilities we have as human beings to not throw our trash around. i usually link it to health problems and things like that, and then antonio will talk more in-depth about the kinds of illnesses caused by the insects that hover around these trash pits. those meetings are always so crazy though....kids running around, moms chit-chatting, babies crying. so antonio and i decided to have a meeting with the entire community in the hopes that we´d get some people seriously thinking about the problem and what kind of options san jorge has in solving the problem. so we planned this meeting for today, and before i knew it, it was here!

i am getting better in my nervousness about speaking in front of a bunch of people. even in the states, when i was speaking in english, my own native language, i always felt intimidated (isn´t speaking in public like the #1 fear that most people have?). so what do i do? i CHOOSE to join the peace corps, where i am responsible for making a regular appearance speaking in public, only now i´m not even doing it in my own language. sometimes i just don´t get myself, really i don´t. so antonio and i worked all weekend planning the charlas we´d both give, drawing our explanations (you have to remember to draw pictures of the things you´ve written, because more likely than not, most of the people you´re speaking to can´t read), and just generally organizing how we´d go about the charla. we got permission from don paco, this guy who owns finca los andes in san jorge (which is so beautiful, it´s a flower vivero on this huge spot of land amongst the cafetales...i love it there), to use an area of the finca for the meeting. the finca has everything we needed - chairs, a place for the meeting, a bathroom, etc. we made invitations for the meeting on my computer and then printed them off and copied them at the computer place in apaneca (another salvadoran thing....you HAVE to officially invite people to things like this, or nobody will come. you can´t just put up a flyer on a telephone post, you have to personally go invite everyone...what a pain!)

so on monday morning we set out to deliver invitations to all 116 houses in san jorge. yeah! some people were all about it, some looked at us like we were nuts, and others showed interest, but still looked a little confused. but whatever, right? i was up kind of late last night trying to practice delivering my part of the charla and no matter how hard i tried to keep it the same every time, i´d end up ad-libbing which can really screw me up because i´m still translating from english to spanish and it just can get really confusing to stay on track.

let me tell you a little something about holding a meeting in el salvador. no matter what time you schedule a meeting for, the meeting always starts at least an hour later because salvadorans never come on time. never. we americans like to call it ¨la hora salvadoreña.¨ antonio knows this because, duh, he´s salvadoran. but he´s also a pretty punctual salvadoran (one of the only ones i´ve met). we agreed to meet at the finca at 1:30 p.m (the meeting was scheduled for 2:00 p.m.), because in his words, ¨it´s better to get there before everyone else does.¨ i was a little skeptical about people coming to the meeting, because we put on the invitation that the meeting was about the trash problem and sometimes i get the impression that the people of san jorge aren´t really interested in simply talking about the trash problem. they want someone to come and take care of the problem for free and that´s about as far as it goes.

so anyway, we sat there twiddling our thumbs at 1:30, and chit-chatted with the workers at the finca and don paco and his family, and 2:00 came and went and then 2:30 arrived and the first couple people moseyed on in. other people start coming in and like clockwork, at 3:00, we started this meeting an hour after it was supposed to start.

but good times! we had a pretty healthy audience (about 50 people came...more women than men), only one dog, some geese, only a handful of kids/babies (yay!) and a couple of turkeys. no chickens, thank god. but i was kind of wishing we´d had chickens instead of turkeys, because for the first time in my life i´ve had to talk over actual turkeys gobbling back and forth at each other. seriously, when i get back to the states, i should have NO problems whatsoever delivering any kind of presentation after having to stand in front of a bunch of people and give a charla in spanish, remembering to time my words correctly so as not to be drowned out by geese honking, turkeys gobbling and a dog sniffing his butt in front of me.

antonio gave our little introduction - talking about how the ministerio de salud and cuerpo de paz were collaborating in this effort to figure out the trash problem in san jorge, and then i launched into my part of the charla. i focused on trash and how it relates to the environment, while antonio talked about trash and its relation to people´s health. one thing i am good at when giving a presentation is making eye contact, and i´m glad i´m able to do that because when i was talking about the different classifications of trash (organic/inorganic) and how we need to pay attention to that and how the inorganic trash is bad for the future and all that, i could see people nodding their heads and agreeing with me and that really made it a lot easier to continue. one, i knew they could understand me (believe me, sometimes i still can´t believe i´m speaking another language) and two, i knew that they didn´t think i was just blowing a bunch of hot air. it´s easy to feel like you´re some kind of crazy person down here when you start talking about things like this because a lot of the time people look at you like you´re nuts when you pick up trash off the ground or tell someone you´re recycling your plastic bottles. (you should see people´s faces when i DON´T throw my trash out the bus window, but put it in a bag i brought so i can get rid of it when i get home). but in the meeting, i could tell that they really agreed with me and understood what i was saying about the consequences of trash and contamination. i felt like i was teaching them something.

it´s different with adults than it is with kids, you know? giving a charla to adults is a lot more intimidating and in this meeting there were a bunch of machista men there that i could tell were thinking ¨who does this broad think she is?¨ but they didn´t say anything crazy while i was talking, thank god. speaking of which, i toyed with the idea of throwing a little something about god in my charla, just because EVERYONE here is religious and i felt it wouldn´t hurt if i said that ¨god wants us to take care of the earth, so we need to do that.¨ so i did, and you should of seen these people - they were all smiles and nodding heads and what-not. things just work differently here and if it´s not gonna hurt to say a little something about dios, well, then i can do that.

antonio, obviously, talked a lot more than i did, just because he can speak spanish. i was so happy, though, because the people were contributing as well to the meeting. it wasn´t just antonio and i up front doing all the talking, which was so completely awesome! the one big obstacle that san jorge has in solving the trash problem is there is nowhere to put trash, other than burn it. burning it is better than leaving it to sit on the ground, but burning it is gross too, and horrible for the environment. pick your poison, i guess....literally. apaneca (the pueblo) has trash pick up every single day. a truck comes around town and you know when to take your trash out (you can´t leave it out because of the aforementioned crazy dogs and other animals) when you hear a bell ringing. yes, the trash truck has an actual bell on the side by the driver´s door and the driver actually rings the bell as the truck goes down the street. anyway, the trash truck goes through apaneca every day, not to mention the people employed by the mayor´s office that go around the pueblo with those metal barrels which have had wheels added to them, and clean up trash from the streets.

but in san jorge, the trash truck never makes an appearance....which is crazy to me, because san jorge is part of the municipio of apaneca, and it seems to me that all the caserios and colonias and cantones that are a part of the municipio of apaneca should get trash pickup. i want the people of san jorge to get organized and go to the mayor and ask him why they don´t get trash pickup, but i´m not sure how to approach that subject because i need to stay fairly un-biased in my work, and getting involved with challenging the mayor is a touchy subject. so i simply told the people in the meeting today that they all have the right to live in a clean place and possibly they could form a group of people that could explore options for getting rid of the trash. and they all nodded their heads in agreement. so we kind of left it at that....giving them an educational charla, but also giving them an opportunity to think about actually taking action. we´ll see what happens.

we´re planning to have another meeting in a couple months or so....maybe even next month....to try and get more people involved. don paco even said that san jorge should start kind of a collaboration within the community where the people who had pickup trucks could take a load of garbage to the basurero (landfill) outside of ataco once a week. see, that´s so cool....that´s what our work is about down here....getting people thinking and realizing that they have the ability to solve problems and the like.

so i feel way good about this little project!!!

in other news, our school was robbed! punk thieves broke into the school and stole a bunch of stuff and so school hasn´t really been normal for the past week (like the kids need any more disturbances what with all the fiestas and vacations and all that). next week is semana santa, so no school for a week. hopefully things will return to normal after vacation.

that´s it for now.....i´ll be back soon, i´m sure! buenas noches!

painting el salvador

wow! two entries in one day! i had some catching up to do. and i just got back from guatemala and want to report on that. i feel like i´m never caught up!

well, we finally finished the map project and i have to say, it was sooo worth all the spilled paint and sun beating down on our necks every day. the primary map project that most volunteers take on is a world map, but because the kids in my school are so young, i knew we wouldn't be able to take on that project. i certainly could have done the world map myself had i wanted to, but the whole point of an activity like this is to include the kids because they need to participate in activities like this. the situation here in el salvador isn't like in the states where kids get all kinds of opportunities to do stuff like this – they don't have art classes (at least they don't in my school), they have very limited school supplies and there are really no resources for arts and crafts and that kind of thing. but the kids here are just like kids everywhere and love being able get their hands dirty and make something – from a tower made of wooden blocks to a huge map on the wall of their school. they were so excited when i told them that we'd be doing the map and like i mentioned before, i tried to get every kid in there doing something.

and as i also mentioned before, was a bit of a mess as we were working with oil-based paint and that meant every spill was pretty much permanent. we were really doing well for a while, but the inevitable happened when one kid who was running near where we were painting, knocked over this whole can of blue paint and it went all over the sidewalk. it was horrible and i was like "whaaaat?" so we cleaned it up as best as possible and there's still a huge blue blob on the sidewalk, but the teachers were like "whatever" so i'm not that worried about it. so anyway, in-between the various meetings and days of no school because of a fiesta and the escuelas saludables, we managed to get the map painted and it turned out fantastic!

what's really great is that the kids can say that they participated in it. i told them the other day during formation (something they do every monday, they all have to gather in front of the classrooms while one of the teachers talks about the "valores del mes" and they do the national anthem and the our father) that they did a great job and we all gave ourselves a round of applause. and i tried to tell them that even if they didn't paint or draw the map, that just by helping tape the newspaper up or giving suggestions helped. one kid gave me advice on what color to paint honduras and guatemala and so i said that that was helping too. it's also cool to overhear the kids talking about the map – like where the different departments are and things like that. the map is so huge, it's really in-their-faces and hard to not look at, so hopefully after seeing it so many times, they'll have el salvador imprinted in their minds. they'll be able to tell anyone each and every department, major body of water and major city in every department by the time they leave 6th grade! so anyways, that's the story of what it was like to paint with kids in el salvador.

and here are the photos!


so this is the wall we started with: half white, half blue (blue and white are like the national colors here....the flag, schools, police stations, etc.)

my face tells the story of the el salvador sun....that damn sun was beating down on that wall every day from 12:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. we couldn't avoid it, though, because those are the hours that the 3rd – 6th grade kids have classes.

so we had to have an entirely white base for the map, so we had to paint the blue half. i had the third graders help with that because they were pretty much too young to do any of the other detailed stuff later.



so after the wall was all white, we started drawing the map. the way the map works is you have a specific set of 8x11 pages (depending on whether you're doing the world map or the el salvador one). the el salvador map is obviously smaller, so there are fewer pages – only eight. if you put all the eight pages together, you have the whole map in front of you. the map is drawn within the squares. it's up to you to figure out how big you want the map. so you figure out how big each square will be and then you just draw as many squares as is required, at the size you decided on. then, after you have all the squares drawn, you have the size of your map. then the kids can draw the map by just following what is drawn in each square on the pages that you started with.


so here are some of the fifth and sixth graders drawing the map.

in this picture you can see the grid lines on the wall and how the kids are following what is on the page to draw the map.







ok, so here is the map after we got it all drawn.


next it was time to paint – here are some of the little kids helping shake up the paint.



here are the fourth graders helping paint the map.










courtney came early for the full moon hike and helped out! oh, do you see how there's that line of blue under the country – where the ocean is supposed to be? well, that was the color we were gonna use for all the water....i had mixed bright blue with white to make a lighter blue...and we had already started painting it – until that crazy kid spilled almost all of that blue paint. so i had to go get some more and just decided to get pre-mixed light blue. but anyways, so ricardo and edwin are painting the ocean with the light blue and we had to paint over the brighter light blue and it took like almost four coats to completely cover that stupid blue line.


so this was what the map looked like about half-done. we made a mistake on the departments of chalatenango/cabañas (the green and yellow departments in the very middle of the map....we painted the little part above cabañas green, but it's supposed to be part of chalatenango)

so after we fixed that and put a second coat of paint on, here are some of the fifth grade girls using chalk to mark where they thought major cities in each of the departments were located.

and wallah! here are some of the kids and the teachers with the final product (the one guy is the new computer teacher, javier, who is 1,000 times better than the guy who was teaching computers last year!).

same picture, only me, mirna and some more kids are in there too.

onto the next project........

la luna llena en apaneca

so on the 3rd was the full moon hike at my site and i decided to take everyone to laguna las ninfas, since it is pretty much my favorite place in all of el salvador. it's a pretty easy hike, it only takes about an hour to get to the top and to the place where we camped. anyway, the day of the hike i still really wasn't sure how many people were coming up. i knew the core – about seven of us from my group – were for sure gonna be there. and i had gotten a couple random text messages and e-mails from some volunteers from the newer ag4/ee group that swore in in november of last year saying they were coming, as well as a couple people from other groups. but 'round about 6:30 p.m., there were about 20 people that showed up! like i said before, it was a little overwhelming....everyone in my house, walking through apaneca, eating at the pupuseria. it was totally an invasión américano. antonio came too and i think he was even more overwhelmed than i was, just because i don't think he ever thought that in his lifetime he'd be hiking up to the top of laguna las ninfas in the middle of the night with 20 peace corps volunteers. but he was a trooper and was the real guide of the hike. i'm sure you all know by now (from all my previous entries about hiking), i'm not the fastest of hikers and prefer to catch my breath and hike slow than see who can make it to the top fastest. sure, that might be code for "my ass is slow," but that's just the way it goes and you know, what's the big deal – we all end up at the same place anyway....what does it matter who is up there first or not?

so as we made our way through the pueblo, we were approached by one of apaneca's finest bolos, who was probably dumbstruck at the huge group of us with our backpacks and headlamps headed his way. after passing him and his loud rants about us being his amigos and all that, we crossed the highway and headed up the dirt road and trail to the laguna. i stayed towards the back with courtney and mark and when we caught up to the rest of the group at the laguna, they were all standing on the wall (built on one side of the laguna to keep the water inside) in this huge line like a sentinel, with their headlamps pointed at us. then somebody took a picture of us emerging from the steps leading from the dried-up creek bed. we were like "what the hell??" so then we made our way through the forest and up to the top of the mountain and it was so beautiful. it was the night of the lunar eclipse, so the moon still had a bit of the red coloring to it (the actual full-on eclipse had ocurred around 5:00 p.m. or so, so we missed that). the valley where juayua is located was lit up so beautifully by the moon and the lights of that pueblo, and you could see the volcanoes shrouded in the clouds in the moonlight.

we hiked a bit farther up and found a camping spot. we set up the tent, hauled up some rocks to make a campfire pit, gathered leña and mark started the fire. soon enough we were opening our bottles of wine and boozing it up while listening to bluegrass and it was such a great time. again, i think antonio was a bit taken aback at our idea of fun – but it's just because salvadorans don't really do this type of thing. but he was enjoying himself and after he got used to the idea of us putting marshmallows on the ends of sticks and sticking them in the fire, all was good (you realize how american you are when you do something like this and salvadorans look at you like you're crazy....haha).

that night was mighty cold, and the wind moved in somewhere in the early morning (yes, the same wind i was talking about earlier that lasted for three days and nearly took off half the roofs in apaneca). the view of the volcanoes and the valley the next morning was beautiful and we made it down the mountain with no problems. despite the wind, it was a bright and sunny day and i realized that i really had the best weather for the hike (it actually rained this past saturday, which would have SUCKED for the hike....so thank god the rain came a week later than the hike....). it was fun hosting the hike, but i have to admit, it's kind of stressful having everyone come to your site (especially such a huge number) and expecting you to show them a good time, you know? everyone who came though was totally awesome and super chill and i had a great time hangin' with all of them....couldn't have asked for a better group of people to share the hike with!


megan, york and anna

me, courtney and kate (and smoke)

molineros x´s 3!

antonio trying to avoid the campfire smoke

¨the core¨ (hee hee)....me, tara, kate, york, courtney, mark

the beautiful view the next morning overlooking the valley and volcanoes

the silhouettes of kate, me, courtney and tara (kate´s not really that gigantor tall....just happened to be standing on a rock..)

the amate tree down by the laguna. kate and tara are trying to climb up to it. yes, the tree is THAT big!

sad news

rufina amaya, the salvadoran woman i´ve written about a couple times here in the blog, died this week. here´s a short article if you´ve no idea who i´m talking about. i´m quite saddened by this news as i got to meet rufina amaya and heard her story first-hand back in training in 2005.

ok, so in the next entry i will have pictures for you, i promise! i had my full moon hike, which was crazy and fun. i thought only ¨the core¨ (the name we´ve given ourselves, the ones who´ve made it to all or most of the full moon hikes) would be in attendance, along with a couple others. but about 20 people showed up! it was a little overwhelming at first having this big gob of peace corps volunteers roaming around apaneca until we left for the hike. but it all went fine and it was a great time. so i´ll have those pictures in the next entry.

also, the map project´s taking a little longer than expected. that´s mostly because sunday, monday and tuesday of this week were days of wind. i´m just gonna start calling them that, just like one would say that there were rainy days. it was sooooo godawful windy, things would not stay on my clothesline, like the clothespins wouldn´t even stay put. and painting more of the map was totally out of the question as it´d just get covered with the small tornadoes of dirt that were blowing around. so we had to pick up on wednesday. there are only a few things left to add and then the varnish and it will be complete! the teachers now want me to paint other things around the school, and the directora of the unidad de salud was at our school on wednesday for ¨escuela saludables¨ and saw the map and wants me to paint things at the unidad de salud in apaneca now. i´ve never considered myself an artist or anything, but put a can of paint in my hands and everyone in el salvador thinks i´m fucking diego rivera. hey, whatever works.

so i´ll leave you with that. have a great weekend!!!

buenas noches!

check out how popular my friends are!

no, seriously. here is an article in the miami herald about two friends of mine (we are all in the same ag4/ee group here in peace corps el sal). i think it´s a great article. make sure you check out the slide shows!

as for me:

pintura de aceite (oil paint) + niños + el salvador sun = pure craziness!

but it´s been fun. we probably won´t finish the map until next week because of the ever-changing schedules of the teachers, but no hay problema. the kids LOVE it and in-between cleaning up paint spills and teaching the kids that they don´t need humongous globs of paint on their brushes, we´re in the process of creating a really beautiful map. and despite the fact that the teachers think that i should do it all (¨so the kids don´t ruin it¨ - were their exact words), i´ve managed to pretty much include everyone in the process.

in addition to this, it is blazing hot here right now. yes, even in the mountains i´m getting a sunburn every day. pero, it´s nice to be warm all day for a change.

not much more news to report.....i´ve changed my lunch routine. now if that´s not muy importante, hot-off-the-presses news, i don´t know what is! no, i´ve started eating up at niña domy´s house where it´s a lot more tranquilo and i don´t have to sit and listen to the teachers chambre (gossip) for an hour. sure, every day a mouse runs across the floor when i´m eating at niña domy´s, but it´s so much more peaceful chatting with her than with the teachers! plus, her lunch only costs 75 cents instead of the dollar i was paying niña flor. that leaves me a quarter left for more mango.

well, i´ll leave you on that bit of hot news......

adios for now!